A typical corporate organization utilizes the Internet to communicate with customers and vendors, to conduct research, and to perform various other tasks. The organization also creates and maintains confidential and proprietary information, such as financial data, personal information, confidential documents, intellectual property, and customer lists as part of the usual course of business. Theft of proprietary information is one of the most costly security problems facing organizations today. For example, theft of financial data, customer lists, and intellectual property can impact revenues, increase legal costs, and erode long-term competitive advantages for an organization.
To minimize access to proprietary information associated with an organization's data storage system, certain organizations typically utilize user authorization systems. These authorization systems include predefined policies that assign a level of risk or risk score to a user or user device. The organizations in turn, utilize the risk score to either allow or deny the user from carrying out a given operation on a particular resource associated with the data storage system.
For example, conventional authorization systems, such as used by banking institutions, are configured to receive and cache eFraud Network (EFN) lists from an EFN server. Conventional EFN lists can include a list of stolen credit card numbers or a list of unsafe or risky Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. During operation, when the authorization system receives a resource request from a user device, such as a request to access a bank account, the authorization system compares a user device identifier, such as an IP address, associated with the resource request with entries in a corresponding EFN list. Based upon the results of the comparison, the authorization system can assign a risk score to the user device indicating a level of risk associated with allowing user device access to the requested resource. Based upon the risk score, the organizations can further allow or deny the user's request to access the resource based upon an associated, preconfigured policy.